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The latest brilliant plan to curtail Isis in the Middle East? Give more weapons to current members of al-Qaida. The Daily Beast reported that former CIA director David Petraeus, still somehow entrenched in the DC Beltway power circles despite leaking highly classified secrets, is now advocating arming members of the al-Nusra Front in Syria, an offshoot of al-Qaida and a designated terrorist organization. Could there be a more dangerous and crazy idea?

How bad is it getting for Hillary when the best her defenders came come up with is Harold Ford Jr.'s formulation: okay, so the words most associated with her are "liar," "dishonest" and "untrustworthy" but, hey!—she's not "unpatriotic." On today's Morning Joe, after Ford resorted on Hillary's behalf to the last refuge of scoundrels, Joe Scarborough hit him with a killer question: does Ford think David Petraeus—who was convicted of a crime for improperly passing classified material--is a patriot? Ford had to acknowledge that he is, but when Harold tried to distinguish Hillary's actions from Petraeus', Scarborough swept in to...

A new batch of Hillary Clinton's emails made public by the State Department Monday night show her expressing interest in the presidential aspirations of Gen. David Petraeus, who ultimately took a job as CIA director in the Obama administration instead of running for president in 2012 and was then driven out of government by scandal. Clinton--who's now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination next year--sounded intrigued when her longtime friend Sidney Blumenthal reported to her on a Saturday morning in February 2010 that prominent Washington foreign policy blogger Steve Clemons said Petraeus was talking frankly about the possibility of...

  A revelation coming out of Hillary Clinton's emails was her keen interest in the Presidential ambitions of one General David Petraeus: "Clemons had dinner this week with Petraeus, who freely talked about running for president," Blumenthal wrote to Clinton. "Will he write about Petraeus?" Clinton wrote back five minutes later. Moments later, Blumenthal sent Clinton Clemons' post mentioning the off-the-record dinner and discussing the relative political merits of Petraeus, Vice President Joe Biden and Clinton herself. "Clemons... told me more detail about [Petraeus'] attitude and interest," Blumenthal said, adding a couple of nuggets. Within four months someone decided to...

Hillary Clinton is in trouble. Really big trouble. According to the Washington Post, the same prosecutor who took down General David Petraeus for improper possession of classified information is now looking into Hillary Clinton's email server. Earlier this week, an intelligence Inspector General revealed Clinton did in fact have at least four pieces of top secret, classified information passed through and stored on her private email server. The investigation is being overseen by two veteran prosecutors in the Justice Department’s National Security Division. One of them helped manage the prosecution of David H. Petraeus. As a reminder, Petraeus plead guilty...

Donald Trump said this week he thinks he'll face Vice President Joe Biden in the general election for president next year. Trump talked with Breitbart and said the email scandal enveloping Hillary Clinton's campaign will ultimately force her out of the race, making way for Biden to win the Democratic primary and square off with Trump, a Republican, in 2016. "I think so," Trump told Breitbart when asked if he sees himself pitted against Biden in 2016. "I think Hillary has got huge problems right now," Trump said. "Is she going to make it? I hear this thing is big...

After years of holding herself above the law, telling lie after lie, and months of flat-out obstruction, HIllary Clinton has finally produced to the FBI her server and three thumb drives. Apparently, the server has been professionally wiped clean of any useable information, and the thumb drives contain only what she selectively culled. Myriad criminal offenses apply to this conduct. Anyone with knowledge of government workings has known from inception that Hillary’s communications necessarily would contain classified and national security related information. Thanks to the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community, it is now beyond dispute that she had ultra-Top...

Former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said that if he was still a U.S. Attorney, he’d have former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton under investigation for five different crimes. “I believe she should be under investigation by the United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York for obstruction of justice, for destroying government property,” he said on CNN’s New Day. “I think its clear that she had a conflict of interest, her husband getting hundreds of millions of dollars, she’s making decisions about companies and about corporations that he’s getting money from. I think they filed a joint...

In a humbling chapter of an exemplary career, David Petraeus – a West Point grad who went on to command U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan before becoming the nation’s top spy – pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to sharing classified information. U.S. Magistrate Judge David Keesler sentenced Petraeus to two years’ probation and a $100,000 fine, throwing out a recommended $40,000 fine because of the seriousness of the charges and to deter others. He called Petraeus’ actions a “serious lapse of judgment” that stood “in stark contrast to 37 years of achievement.” As Keesler moved through the methodical...

In a humbling chapter of an exemplary career, David Petraeus – a West Point grad who went on to command U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan before becoming the nation’s top spy – pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to sharing classified information. Under a plea agreement, Petraeus was to be sentenced by U.S. Magistrate Judge David Keesler to two years’ probation and a $40,000 fine. As Kessler moved through the methodical proceedings, Petraeus answered questions in strong voice, one accustomed to addressing troops and congressmen. Patraeus was sentenced in Charlotte, the city where the security breach was discovered as...

Former CIA Director David Petraeus plea-bargained to a misdemeanor count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material after having given classified government information to his onetime mistress, Paula Broadwell. How was Gen. Petraeus‘ transgression uncovered? By exposure of a nongovernment email account that he had set up with to communicate with Ms. Broadwell free of CIA scrutiny.After a series of Democratic scandals in the New York state legislature, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is instituting a policy to have the emails of state employees automatically deleted after 90 days. Apparently, Mr. Cuomo does not want e-trails of politicians’ communications. Meanwhile, the...

A question I often am asked is: "Who would you bet on to win the presidency?" Personally, I don't bet on politics, but here's my current take on the 2016 presidential race—with, of course, the caveat that we don't know which campaigns will turn out the best in terms of organization, strategy, tactics, or execution, much less which candidates will step on land mines along the way. The Democratic nomination appears fairly straightforward. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now the prohibitive favorite. If her early stumbles during her book tour, or remarks like the one she made about...

Former four-star general and CIA chief David Petraeus pleaded guilty to one count of retaining classified information for handing over information in personal notebooks to his biographer girlfriend in 2011. He agreed to pay a $40,000 fine; prosecutors said they would recommend two years' probation instead of prison, although a judge could decide otherwise. It's a sad close to a government career for the man whose counterinsurgency strategy turned around the war in Iraq. He's an American hero who seemed all that much more upright when he resigned in November 2012 after admitting to an affair that compromised his position...

David H. Petraeus, the best-known military commander of his generation, has reached a plea deal with the Justice Department and admitted providing his highly classified journals to a mistress when he was the director of the C.I.A. Mr. Petraeus has agreed to plead guilty to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material, a misdemeanor. He is eligible for up to one year in prison but prosecutors will recommend a sentence of probation for two years and a $40,000 fine. The plea deal completes a spectacular fall for Mr. Petraeus, a retired four-star general who was once discussed...

The New York Times reports federal prosecutors are recommending felony charges against former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus for allegedly providing classified information to a civilian author and journalist with whom he allegedly had an affair. Meanwhile, another controversy is waiting to boil over within the Obama administration: a sex scandal involving the CIA’s Petraeus. The timing is—intriguing. Only after the Benghazi attacks, as Petraeus’s loyalty to the administration falls into question, does everything turn sour for the spy chief. In the immediate aftermath of the Benghazi attacks, Petraeus first draws ire from some administration colleagues for not reading from...

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors have recommended bringing felony charges against retired Gen. David H. Petraeus for providing classified information to his former mistress while he was director of the C.I.A., officials said, leaving Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to decide whether to seek an indictment that could send the pre-eminent military officer of his generation to prison. The Justice Department investigation stems from an affair Mr. Petraeus had with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer who was writing his biography, and focuses on whether he gave her access to his C.I.A. email account and other...

Overview A new CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force report, North America: Time for a New Focus, asserts that elevating and prioritizing the U.S.-Canada-Mexico relationship offers the best opportunity for strengthening the United States and its place in the world. "It is time to put North America at the forefront of U.S. policy," the report says. "The development and implementation of a strategy for U.S. economic, energy, security, environmental, and societal cooperation with its two neighbors can strengthen the United States at home and enhance its influence abroad." Chaired by David H. Petraeus, retired U.S. Army general and chairman of the KKR...

In another heated exchange between State Department spokesman Marie Harf and AP reporter Matt Lee, the issue of whether any governments are funding ISIS / ISIL is proving to be a hot button issue. In this particular exchange, Qatar is the focus but other countries – specifically Turkey – should start getting spotlighted soon. Harf contends that there is “no evidence” of governments funding ISIL but Lee calls her on that assertion based on a quote from President Obama. To say there is “no evidence” that any government is “supporting this group (ISIS)” is a major lie ... Let’s go...

America should launch "targeted" military attacks against an emerging "terrorist army" in Iraq if it jeopardises the security of the West, the former head of Coalition forces in the country said last night. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph, David Petraeus, one of the most senior figures in the American military over the past decade, said that he would now support limited strikes against the leadership of Isis. Gen Petraeus's intervention came as Barack Obama, the US President, announced that America was sending 300 special forces advisers to Iraq to help support the fight against Isis. Mr Obama...

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder was pressed about why the case against ex-CIA Director David Petraeus is still under investigation. Indications are that members of Congress are concerned that the case is still hanging in limbo to prevent Petraeus from revealing what he knows about the Benghazi attacks. If, as has been relayed by Shoebat.com, the details of an extensive report published in the London Review are correct, Petraeus was the man in charge of the logistics of an operation in Benghazi that involved shipping weapons from Libya to Syria through Turkey and that...